“The Lou Ruvo Brain Institute is a planned research center which is being built in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Institute will become a national resource for the most current research and scientific information for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington ‘s diseases, as well as focusing on prevention, early detection and education.”

WOW! How important. That is just fantastic!

Philanthropist Larry Ruvo founded the Keep Memory Alive Foundation as a heartfelt reaction to his father’s (Lou Ruvo) detrerioration at the hands of Alzheimer’s. This truly astounding foundation has raised over 20 million dollars by throwing some of the most popularly attended celebrity-irific galas Las Vegas has ever seen. This is all great.

But then things take a wierd turn.

In February of 2007, ground was broken on the Lou Ruvo Brain Instute, which was designed by architect Frank Gehry. Let’s take a Gaycondo sponsored “walking” tour of the planned design….

Hey, that’s pretty modern and minimalist. Maybe it reminds me of a pleasant stack of (Lanvin) shoe boxes. That’s nice. I like that. It’s calming. I wonder what the rest of this serene structure must be like?

OH MY GOD! The back of this building is like some sort of fucked up, very literal interpretation of a drawing by M.C. Escher. Somehow, I feel like if I was having mental collapse, I wouldn’t want the building I was recieving treatment in the be a ridiculously “in the now” postmodern representation of my ailment.

Do all high profile publicly funded (the state of Nevada kicked in a cool $12 million ) buildings built in the last couple of decades have to be so insanly (no pun intended) over designed? Wouldn’t a tasteful concrete box have sufficed???

Am I out of my miond for thinking this? (still no pun intended)

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PS: This building is TOTALLY AWESOME!!!! It’s like when I see it, every other cool building I’ve ever seen just gets absolutely erased from my mind!! Like, maybe after seeing the outrageous super fantastic-ness of this design I might even forget where my house is. What does Gaycondo look like again????

(that last one was in fact actually a fucked up joke about Alzheimer’s by the way….)